By
Young E Kim
, University of Chicago
Gettin' Rejected
Applying to a PhD program in English was probably the most difficult thing that I have done in my life. I’m not entirely sure why I decided to go through it. The job market for English PhD’s is really tight, and that won’t let up anytime soon. If I stayed in the consulting business, I probably would have made in five years what I’m going to make in a lifetime with an English PhD. After I got rejected by six PhD programs the first time I applied, a teacher of mine advised that I give it up entirely. He quoted a statistic that out of the entire graduating PhD class at Yale, only two of them got jobs this year. He was being pretty blunt when he said that unless I was really really bright (I’m not), I shouldn’t even bother – it’s just too difficult to make it. Well, I know that I’m not going to be the brightest in my class at the University of Chicago, but I have nothing better to do with my life. Strangely enough, even if all the schools that I applied to rejected me again, I probably would have tried again two years later. I’m sure part of the reason I applied was because I’ve never faced a more difficult challenge in my life, and I wanted to prove that I could do it.
I’ll explain what I did wrong the first time around and what I did to improve my chances the second time around. Through the course of reading this, you will probably discover that essentially nothing changed about me. I’m still the same unqualified person I was two years ago, but on paper it appears as if I’m a completely different person. If I seem to be making a mockery of the process – as if I am explaining how I fooled the system – you’re probably right. But this also means that you can do it, too.
Going through the application process isn’t cheap, and it would pay to get it right the first time. For English, I had to take the General GRE and GRE Subject Test in English Literature – each cost $100. Application fees were an average of $60 – since I applied to six schools, it cost about $350. Just for trying, you’re spending an excess of $500. And since you’re all grown up now, your parents probably aren’t footing the bill.
The first time I applied, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I thought I would have a good shot at getting into Brown because I mentioned that I read a book written by a Brown faculty member. After I got rejected by Brown, I asked this faculty member why I didn’t get in. She said that even though I wanted to study Shakespeare, it’s clear that I suck at it. Yale told me that nearly everything about my application stunk. Gee, thanks for the honesty, but you’ll have to forgive me when I say that you’re a lying bitch when you say, “We encourage you to reapply next year.” Princeton told me some members of the admissions committee wanted to accept me, but there were more that didn’t. Columbia said that my test scores could use some improvement and that my statement of purpose should be more concise. Harvard and UPenn refused to give me any helpful (or not so helpful) comments. And in case you’re wondering, it’s just a coincidence that I applied to only Ivy League schools the first time around.
